


yearning for the fool

by Lire_Casander



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Western, Jesse Manes is His Own Warning, M/M, Minor Character Death, Queer Assault, Robbery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23606266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: There's nothing that's Michael's in this ship. Nothing, except the prisoner.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 6
Kudos: 79
Collections: Time After Time: A Roswell New Mexico Alternate Era AU Event, there will always be an us (in every world in every story)





	yearning for the fool

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SoniaEarpHaught](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoniaEarpHaught/gifts).



> Written for the [Time After Time Event](https://alterarnm.tumblr.com/) over a Tumblr, **Day 3: western**.
> 
> Prompt given by [fiona-glenanne-westen](https://fiona-glenanne-westen.tumblr.com/): **Criminal & Marshall (How about for Westerns, one of them is the US marshal and one of them is a criminal the marshal has to transport over the border to go to trial, but obviously the situation gets complicated?)**
> 
> Title from _Left Behind_ from Spring Awakens OST. Beta'ed by [saadiestuff](https://saadiestuff.tumblr.com/), who's also helped through the writing of this story when I got hit by writer's block. Also, big thanks to [eveningspirit](eveningspirit.tumblr.com) for always being there to hold my hand when things get rough.

Michael can’t believe his good luck, for once. After a time of failure after failure — of becoming the familyʼs disappointment, some sort of a joke to tell during gatherings — heʼs finally hit the jackpot. He’s finally done something to earn his family’s approval. He’s managed to capture one of the most wanted criminals in the whole galaxy — and he pretty much wants to reach their destination and drop his precious cargo so he can go celebrate this victory that tastes like droplets of rain after the longest drought. Michael tells himself that itʼs because he deserves good things coming his way, but heʼs also aware that Maxʼs downfall has had something to do with his own sudden rise in the family business. 

He rubs a hand over his face, the other trying to tame a wild curl that often falls into his eye. He doesn’t want to think about how Max had gone awry, choosing an Earthling over his own family, betraying their legacy, and then dying in an attempt to bring some human back to life. It isn’t lost on Michael that Max had fallen in love, Max had made a decision with his heart and not with his head for once, but itʼs also not lost on Michael that he wouldn’t have had this chance had Max been alive. And it doesn’t say much about Michael’s ability to keep his head above the water — nor about his familyʼs non-existent faith in him. 

But now heʼs finally made good on his promise to rise from his own ashes. He’s finally done something that would make Max proud of him. And Michael still craves his brotherʼs approval, even from beyond the grave. He dreams of what Max would say if he saw him now, standing tall against the light of the bridge of his own ship, sailing the universe chasing the bad guys and bringing them to justice. 

“You’re giving me a headache,” Isobel tells him from behind, a sudden presence that makes him flinch. “All this overthinking, it’s going to kill you.” 

“If Karantian booze didn’t kill me, I donʼt think overthinking will.” 

“You were younger back then,” Isobel points out, stepping forward and placing a hand on Michaelʼs arm. He stops fiddling with his own hair and allows his hand to fall to his side, guided by Isobelʼs strong grip. “We hadnʼt really found you in Karans. This is different.” 

“You say that as though I was lost.” 

“Werenʼt you, Michael?” she says softly, squeezing his arm. A silence falls upon them for a few minutes before Isobel sighs and turns away, back to her chambers. But before she leaves, she says over her shoulder, “Max would be proud of you, you know. For catching the bad guys instead of being one of them.” 

He groans. He doesn’t want to be reminded of what Max would have thought. Max isn’t here anymore, but he has more tact than to say it to Isobel, whoʼs lost much more than a brother. Without turning around, he nods. Apparently that’s all Isobel needs, because she leaves the bridge in a huff of ethereal flowery drapes and lavender scent. Michael sits down on the solitary captain’s seat, and looks on at the immensity of the stars and nebulae painting a colorful canvas in front of him.

It’s a long journey, from the Quavery System back to Earth, where he has to bring his prisoner. Michael doesn’t know how a human, born and raised on Earth, has managed to travel that far through the galaxy, committing all sorts of crimes against different races — or so claims the interplanetary warrant on his head — without having been spotted even once. It’s almost like this human has learned how to become invisible, to fly off the radar. Michael would be lying if he said he isn’t a little bit jealous and a lot curious as to how his new prisoner has become quite the legend among galaxy criminals. Michael grabs his black cowboy hat — a gift from one of his numerous astray trips to Earth — and puts it on, hiding his curls underneath the large wing, and stands up.

“Bracken,” he speaks up, commander-voice in place. “Take over for a while.” 

“Yes, sir,” comes the prompt reply, and Noah Bracken shuffles from his post as second in command to the captainʼs seat. Michael shoots an appreciative look his way; one day, Noah Bracken will make a good commander, but there’s still a lot of work to do to erase his past as the stowaway who almost provoked an interplanetary war between Antar and Earth. 

Michael turns around and exits the bridge without looking back. He muses about his crew and how they all mesh together in their weirdness — the criminal turned captain by work and grace of Max’s death, the stowaway turned engineer turned second in command, the daddyʼs girl turned steel fighter. They both insist on calling him _captain_ when all he is can be described as a glorified interplanetary marshal. Together, theyʼre stronger than Michael would have ever thought. Together theyʼve brought down the only outlaw whose head means a higher prize than the rest of the criminalsʼ combined. 

He’s about to face that criminal for the first time since he apprehended the human two systems away. 

Michael hovers next to the door leading to the cellar where they usually keep the prisoners they capture during their galaxy-wide hunting. He doesn’t know why he’s nervous — he’s caught the guy, and he’s kept him in that cell for the better part of two days, Earth time. Michael has already seen him, has already fought him, has already _won_. And yet, he’s shuffling uncomfortably in front of the door leading to the long corridor with eight cells disposed equally in both sides of the hallway. Everything’s tidy in the ship that once belonged to Max — everything is always perfect in this little tiny corner of the galaxy. Maybe that’s why he’s nervous, Michael realizes.

Nothing in this ship is _his_.

Except for the prisoner. So maybe he needs to start by dealing with that particular issue if he wants to begin feeling like he belongs in a dead man’s ship.

The prisoner is in the last cell at the left. Michael just walks in, strolling through the corridor until he’s facing the always pristine glass separating him from the one and only Alex Manes. He stares down at the figure crouching on the bench opposite to the glass wall, short hair spiking out in every angle known to humans, head bowed down and hands squeezed together on his lap. Michael takes a minute to take in the sight — the defenseless man in front of him, the feeling of defeat oozing from him. But he shouldn’t be fooled by the apparent innocence of the criminal in front of him. Alex Manes has a reputation that precedes him, and Michael just has found a way to trap him in and bring him back to justice.

“Manes,” he drawls, approaching the glass. He taps on the surface when his words don’t get an immediate response from the prisoner. “Wake up, Manes. You’re not here on vacation.”

Alex Manes looks up then, and somehow Michael wishes he wouldn’t have, for he now has an eyeful of the perfect cheekbones and the chocolate-colored gaze that’s piercing through Michael’s soul. “I thought you weren’t allowed to communicate with your prisoners, _captain_.”

Michael will never get used to that word. He feels like it belongs to Max, like he doesn’t deserve it because somehow he didn’t _earn_ it. It spikes something inside of him, sending a jolt of blind hatred for himself, a need to tamp down everything he feels and drown it in alcohol. But he’s supposedly left all his wild ways behind, so he just looks ahead and takes a step back.

“I’m not a captain,” he says. “But I’m the one who will cash in the prize on your head.”

Alex Manes chuckles and looks back down to his hands. “Your crew calling you that might have confused me,” he says, before adding, softly, “Yeah, I bet you will.”

Michael feels the words like he’s sucker-punched with them, slapped across his face and got his insides turned upside down. He doesn’t understand why he’s so affected by a voice he’s never heard before, by a man he’s supposed to be bringing to justice for all his crimes. He balls his hands into fists and shakes his head. “It will take us at least another five Earth days to reach our final destination.” He turns his back on the prisoner, ready to leave the cells’ hallway — and this uncomfortable conversation — behind.

“Five days?” the prisoner asks, doubt evident in his voice. “We were four solar systems from Earth when you caught me.” 

“This is the fastest ship in the whole universe,” Michael announces proudly, although he doesn’t look back at his prisoner. He keeps walking, one step at a time, but before he reaches the door, heʼs once again stopped. 

“So you came here to announce we’re five days from my trial?” Alex Manes says, a snarl in his voice that wasn’t there before. “No snarky remarks about how you managed to box the only criminal across the galaxy who could escape twice from high-level security prisons? No _curiosity_ to know why I became a criminal? How I fooled your guys all this time? Or even why my own father issued a warrant on my head? You feel like you're invincible, huh? You think you know everything? You’re really one of a kind, _captain_.”

Michael stops dead in his tracks. He knows his prisoner is trying to get a rise out of him, but he won’t give in. Max wouldn’t approve, and Michael hasn’t filled Max’s shoes after his death only to be told off by a criminal who’s had half the galaxy after him in an endless chase. “I will make sure you get proper food and water,” he says in a clipped tone before leaving the hallway and closing the door at his back.

When he makes his way back to the bridge, he realizes his hands are shaking. He stares down at his left hand, mangled and pink, scars defining who he is. He sighs. “Bracken,” he greets, stepping back up. “Go ahead and pull Manes’ file for me. I need to check some facts.”

“Yes, sir,” Noah replies almost instantly, jumping out of the captain’s seat. “Cowboy hat back on?”

“Don’t mention it.”

Michael waits for the files to load on the small screen in front of him. And when he begins perusing through them, he can’t help the surprised yelp that sometimes escapes his lips as he reads on, ignoring the curious glances Isobel keeps sending his way and the snorts that Noah very unsubtly lets out every time Michael shakes his head at some of the lines.

* * *

The following day, after a night of little to no sleep, Michael doesn’t really know what to do about what he’s learned about Alex Manes. He pulled up his files in an attempt to understand how Manes had managed to avoid getting caught for so long, and he’s been met with a really interesting personality trapped in the body of the youngest son of Jesse Manes, one of the highest-ranked marshals in the whole galaxy. It appalls Michael to know that a father issued a warrant against his own son, but finding out that there are no real reasons in the warrant for capturing Alex Manes — other than that he’s been on the loose for a long time. There is no proof that he’s the one terrorizing half the galaxy with his crimes, and there’s definitely not a single scrap of evidence that Alex Manes was the one to set fire to Jesse Manes’ precinct back in Roswell, one of the last bastions of the old United States cowboy forts from other times. And yet, the warrant specifically says that whoever apprehends the _arsonist_ will be the richest sentient being in the whole galaxy.

“You look like shit, brother,” Isobel tells him as a way of greeting when he enters the bridge. “Had a rough night?”

“Shut it,” he mutters, sitting on the captain’s chair. Noah’s already there, like he hasn’t slept at all either, but he looks way better than Michael is feeling right now. He’d heard the stories before hiring Noah Bracken — his thirst for blood, his complete lack of scruples, and his apparent superpower of being able to stay awake for days on end. Michael also knows Noah Bracken could break necks with just a flicker of his pinkie, such was the power bottled in his soul, and Michael isn’t about to be the one to unleash that beast unless he’s completely forced to.

“Well, captain, your sister’s right.”

“You too, Bracken?” Michael groans. “I’ve been thinking.”

“That’s always a risky sport,” Isobel jokes. “What about?”

“There’s no objective reason for Alex Manes to be on those warrants,” he muses out loud. “Objectively, there’s no proof that he’s done anything illegal, other than that his father is a high-ranked military human and he said Alex Manes was the one robbing around the galaxy and setting fire to public property back on Earth.”

“Michael, don’t get distracted now,” Isobel warns him. “Seriously, don’t let whatever pity feeling you’re having cloud your senses. Alex Manes is our way to freedom, finally. With that money we could afford all the procedures to get Max back to life.”

Michael hates being guilt-tripped, but Isobel’s right. As much as he despises Max for being such a stubborn prick and having traded his life for an Earthling’s, Michael misses his brother. Max traveled halfway across the galaxy looking for him, and he begged Michael to come back to them, to be part of their family once again. Max even apologized for having been such a prick during their younger years.

Isobel’s right. They need the money for the procedure that will give Max his life back. He can’t be derailed now.

“I think I’ll go talk to him,” he says out loud. “Learn more about him. See for myself the kind of criminal Alex Manes is.”

Isobel only nods when he stands up, barely ten minutes after sauntering into the bridge, and leaves the room.

Michael strides into the hallway with a security in his step that he doesn’t feel all the way down to his soul. He summons a chair that materializes in front of the last cell and he sits on it, the legs scraping the floor and making a screeching sound that catches his prisoner’s attention.

“Glad to see you’re not asleep, Manes,” he greets. He taps on the glass door with a smirk. “You’re not here on a vacation.”

“You already said that,” Alex Manes retaliates. “Yesterday, or the day before, whenever. The last time you were here. I know I’m not on a vacation. I know I’m your prisoner, and that you’ll be rich by the time you drop me off at the border.”

Michael squints his eyes at the prisoner, trying to understand if the tone he’s using is sarcastic or just plainly tired. He can’t really read Alex Manes, he doesn’t have access to the kind of powers Isobel has mastered, but he can tell by the way he holds himself that his prisoner is bored out of his mind.

“All the rumors about you true?” he snaps when he realizes Alex Manes isn’t going to say anything else.

“Depends on what kind of rumors you’re giving credit to,” Alex replies almost instantly. “Are you more interested in the whole outlaw story or more into the whole gay human who might have screwed his way across the galaxy? Because my father’s made sure everyone knows about those two legends.”

“Is either of them true?”

“Wouldn’t you love to find out, _captain_?”

Michael shakes his head at his prisoner’s wittiness, but he chuckles. “Wanna play chess?” he offers almost as an afterthought, summoning an Earth-like chessboard. “I have a feeling that you’ll like it.”

“Are you sure you mean to offer that to me?” Alex Manes questions in disbelief. “You don’t usually offer to play chess with your prisoners, captain.”

“I’m not your usual captain,” Michael counteracts. “And you’re not like any other prisoners.”

“Right, because I’m the most wanted prisoner in the whole galaxy,” Alex scoffs. “There are posters all around the different systems claiming a prize for my head. Honestly, they could have used a better artist for that mugshot. They didn’t even get my best side.”

“I wholeheartedly agree with that,” Michael jokes along, moving his hand so the chessboard shows up inside the cell, much to Alex’s surprise. “White or black, Manes?”

“White,” Alex replies once he’s managed to stop staring at the board as though it might bite him. “You’re a weird captain, Michael Guerin.”

“And you’re a weird prisoner, Alex Manes.”

They keep playing chess for hours during the four days that it takes them to reach the Earth’s orbit. Michael can’t believe how easy it is for him to talk to Alex, to open himself up to a complete stranger, and how simple life seems when Alex looks at him with those sincere dark eyes. Michael can only hope he makes Alex’s heart stutter the same way Alex does his, and he has to shake himself out of his reverie every single morning before stepping into the hallway because he knows he’s not being a captain now — he’s being a normal alien falling for a human, and that’s bound to end badly, even if he wasn’t the one sending Alex to jail on Earth.

“So, you’re guilty of everything they accuse you on those pamphlets?” he asks casually when they’re a couple of hours into their daily chess game. “You’re an arsonist and a thief?”

“I am a thief,” Alex declares, moving his pawn forward in what looks like a thoughtless movement. “And I am an arsonist.”

“So you’re owning up to it.”

“I only robbed my father,” Alex tells him, as he waits for Michael to make his move. “He’s really something else. He has everyone fooled down on Earth, so I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he set out to capture me. It stung a bit, you know.”

“What do you mean, you only robbed your father?”

“It’s like your cowboy hat,” Alex says, apparently unrelated. “It defines who you are. My father took that definition of myself from me when I was seventeen. He tried to kill me, but I survived. Ever since, he’s been trying to finish that task while I was trying to give back everything the Manes family has taken from others for generations.”

Michael moves his king and asks, “What do you mean?”

“Have you ever wondered who was behind the first Intergalactic War?” Alex muses, moving his pieces around the board expertly. “If you searched deep enough, you’d find a Manes involved. My family has been hunting aliens and anyone who’s different, really, for generations. I was the first one to step up and say I wouldn’t, and my father wasn’t that happy about it.”

Michael nods. “So you tried to kill him by setting fire to his house?”

“I set fire to the place where he almost killed me when I was seventeen. And I set out to find all of his secret stashes of wealth, all those things my family has been gathering for so long, and raided them. But I never took one single coin for myself,” Alex states. “I always gave it to the poorest in every planet my father had set foot on.”

Michael lets all the information sweep over him as he moves his piece. “Check.”

“Checkmate,” Alex retaliates, with a small, resigned smile.

Michael would love to erase that painful grimace off Alex’s face, but he knows he has to keep up the façade of a fierce captain, whatever it takes. He needs the money, he has to bring Alex to justice.

Even if he knows it might break his heart doing so.

* * *

He knows something’s not right the moment the communications start freezing in the bridge. Michael can see Isobel scrambling to keep the conversation she was having with some officer on Earth about their schedule to bring the prisoner to human justice. Michael can see a ship standing in between Earth and them, a ship big enough to block his view of the planet he’s heading to. Noah begins clicking on every button he can find on the console — iridescent colors bright against the deep darkness of the universe surrounding them — and cursing under his breath when the control is taken from him and a face shows up in the screens in front of them; Michael has spent half his life out in the galaxy, enough time to know that the image in his screen belongs to a man from Earth.

Michael doesn’t know who it is, and he doesn’t have any interest in knowing.

“Captain Guerin,” he hears as he looks into icy blue eyes. The man on the screen speaks with a voice grave enough to give him chills, and Michael’s not one to be easily scared. “Happy you answered my call.”

“I don’t have the pleasure,” he replies coldly. He doesn’t like to be hijacked in his own ship, even if he’s tried to escape the notion that he’s now the captain of Max’s vessel. “I don’t know what you want, and I don’t know who you are. But I’m giving you five seconds to exit my comms and free our path before—”

“Before what, _captain_?” the man mocks him, interrupting his not-so-well rehearsed speech. It’s the first time he’s been hailed and stopped, and from the looks of it, if he doesn’t stop it right now, Michael’s ship is about to be taken by assault.

“Bracken,” Michael says with his most authoritative voice, and it takes all his willpower not to crack under the scrutiny of this man who has yet to introduce himself. “Charge up.”

“Don’t go that fast, captain,” the man interrupts him once again. “I may have something interesting to offer you.”

“What could that possibly be?” he says, against his better judgment. He can even hear Isobel huffing at his back, muttering some insult or another about him under her breath. “I don’t even know your name, and you seem pretty confident in knowing who I am.”

“I know who you are, Michael Guerin,” the man retaliates. “But you’re right. I’ve been awfully impolite. Let me introduce myself. My name’s Jesse Manes, and I’m interested in a trade. Your prisoner for double the warrant on his head. Should be easy as pie.”

Michael’s blood freezes in his veins. From what he’s gathered during his conversations with Alex — the _prisoner_ , he reminds himself for a brief second — he’s looking into Alex’s father’s eyes. “Bracken, why isn’t he fried already?” he barks.

“His ship’s got the strongest shield I’ve ever seen up, our ammunition wouldn’t even leave a crack, captain,” Noah replies in a low voice. “I can’t charge against them. It could backfire and destroy _us_.”

“Get out of my way, Manes,” Michael snarls at the screen, trying to put on his toughest face — the grimace that scared away so many other outcasts during his intergalactical bar brawls. “I won’t hesitate in cutting through you to get to my destination.”

“You and I know that you wouldn’t be able to,” Manes tells him with a paternalist voice. “I have something you need, and you have something I want. I’m here to offer you a trade.”

“While kidnapping _my_ communications,” Michael says slowly, in what he hopes is a stern manner. “I’m not interested, Manes.”

“If you don’t give me your prisoner, I’ll take him by force. And believe me, Guerin, you won’t like that.”

“Bracken,” Michael mutters warningly, left hand twitching. “Fry them.”

“Michael,” Isobel calls out to him. He feels the pull of her mind pushing into his, and he doesn’t even try to fight her. He tried, once, and it ended up with him puking his intestines out in the back alley of a sordid bar in Karans. “We won’t survive if he attacks. I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t really want to. Just trade the prisoner, Michael. We can make a good deal. There will be other outlaws to chase. Please.”

“You seriously didn’t force me to leave my old life behind to go bending at some bastard’s beck and call, now, Isobel,” Michael says slowly. They’re in her mindspace, and it always looks pristine and neat, like a perfectly tidied house. “You can’t be serious, Iz.”

“I am. Look at him, Michael!” Isobel pleads. “He will crush us. He will destroy _you_.”

“I have powers he doesn’t, Isobel. Just trust me on this. I haven’t turned to your side for nothing.”

“I don’t want to lose you. I can’t lose you too!”

“Believe me, you—” Michael’s words are cut by the siren wailing inside the ship, out of their shared connection. “What’s that?”

“The alarm? What’s going on?” Isobel pulls them out of her mindspace and back into the bridge, where Noah is looking terrified, pale and trembling. “Noah, what’s going on?”

“While you were away doing whatever thing you do,” Noah explains in a hushed voice. Michael thinks he doesn’t want to speak louder for fear his voice might break. “While you were—whatever, they tricked us. They entered the ship. And no amount of security measures will keep them from taking what they’ve come here for.”

Michael looks at the screen one last time, Manes’ smug face filling it up as he smirks maniacally, before he turns hot on his heels and runs to the cells where they’re holding Alex Manes prisoner. Isobel rushes after him, followed closely by Noah — and Michael will think about this later on, when they’re celebrating their victory over galaxy bandits — and they have to fight over a few intruders who are sweeping through the floors of his ship, armed to the teeth with military weapons Michal has only seen pointed at him in worse conditions in what feels like a lifetime ago.

“Drop your guns!” he bellows as he charges against the military-type intruders who are marching toward the cells. “I’m serious, drop them!” When they don’t follow his orders, Michael stretches out a hand in front of him and focuses.

The guns fall to the ground, much to the distress of the Manes men, and they stare up with fear in their eyes at the three aliens facing them. Michael isn’t about to let them realize he’s as terrified as they are — but not because he thinks he might lose Isobel or Noah, because he knows they can fend for themselves and defend their own honor, but because he’s beginning to understand that his powers may not be enough to save Alex from these crows. He may be telekinetic, and he may have fantastic reflexes, but he can feel through his connection with Noah that there are too many raiders in this assault, and they’re short one too many aliens.

“What’s the plan, captain?” Noah questions, his tone hinting that he knows exactly what they’re going to do. “Should we stuff them up and send them back to space?”

“Be my guest, Bracken,” Michael says with a slow smile that is nothing similar to mirthful. He knew about Noah Bracken’s backstory when he hired him to be part of his crew after Max’s death — he knew about the need for blood and the violent streak pulsing through his veins, always ready to jump — and he never thought it would come in handy.

Again, Michael never thought he’d be captain of a ship being raided by Earthlings trying to steal what’s _his_.

Michael grabs Isobel’s arm and pushes her out of the way while Noah unleashes every ounce of power Michal’s sure he’s been reigning in for the longest time. Some of the raiders — dressed in what Michael believes are military uniforms topped with New America flags on their sleeves — fly around the ship, hitting the walls and the ceiling, bones breaking and necks snapping. Michael tries to protect Isobel from the chaos by pressing her against the nearest wall and covering her taller frame with his body, waiting for the havoc to stop. After a few minutes of wailing and shouting, the noise stops and Michael deems it safe to move. When he turns around, he can see Noah standing in the middle of the hallway, surrounded by fallen raiders, a trickle of blood falling from his nose. Isobel rushes to his side, wiping the blood with her sleeve as she hovers over him.

“Are you okay? Noah, you’re bleeding!”

“Just a side effect,” Noah croaks out, voice cracking up slightly. “I’ll be fine, I swear. But, Michael, you should go find your prisoner. That guy’s bonkers, and he won’t stop.”

“Is he related to the prisoner?” Isobel questions, carefully avoiding saying Alex’s name. “Michael?”

“He’s his father,” Michael grits out as he moves forward. “Go back to the bridge, make sure he doesn’t get aboard,” he orders. “I’ll go check on the prisoner.”

He goes on, running through the corridors until he reaches the cells and barges in. He doesn’t even think twice about what he’s doing when he comes to a halt in front of the only cell that’s occupied. Alex looks up from his imprisonment, seemingly unaware of what’s going on. Michael fights to catch his breath, and places a hand on the glass between them.

“Your father’s here,” he announces straight away. There’s no need to sugarcoat the reality of what they’re going through, and Alex is nothing more than a prisoner he’s meant to bring to justice. Michael’s supposed to cash in for Alex’s head, but Alex is worth more alive than he is dead, and Michael will fight tooth and nail to at least finish his task. He’s trying to convince himself that it’s only money in it for him. “He’s tried to take _my_ ship by assault.”

“So, now it’s your ship, huh?” Alex quips, not addressing the real problem here. Michael wants to groan.

“Listen, this is serious,” Michael tries to make him understand. “Your father sent raiders to bring you back to his ship. He wants you _dead_ , and he’s doing a great job at wrecking this ship to get to you.” He takes a step forward, getting closer to fusing with the glass, when a bolt of pain racks through his mind. He stutters and steps back.

“Michael,” he hears in his head. It’s Isobel, and she doesn’t sound happy. “Guess we didn’t have enough luck to stop him getting onto the ship.”

“Iz?” he asks, tentatively sending out his doubts about why she hasn’t taken him to her mindspace for this communication. There’s only been a couple of times when their conversations have been held in the limbo between thoughts and reality, and neither of them had had a positive outcome. “Are you hurt?”

“Just protect the cargo,” she commands weakly. “Noah’s with me. We’ll be fine.”

She shuts their connection and Michael is left back in this moment, stumbling forward and pressing his forehead on the glass between Alex and himself. He sags, breathing heavily.

“What’s going on?” Alex asks, knocking on the glass slightly. “Captain?”

“He’s _in_ the ship,” Michael manages to choke out. He’s somehow feeling heavy-limbed, as though someone has taken all his energy from him. With a start he realizes that he’s still feeling Isobel, that maybe she hasn’t been able to pull away completely because she’s badly hurt. “I have to protect the ship.”

“I think it’s a little too late for that, _captain_ ,” Jesse Manes says, voice coming from the door leading to the hallway of cells. When Michael looks on, he’s holding a gun pointed straight toward his own head. “You should have accepted my offer.”

“I don’t bargain with criminals,” Michael tells him, feigning a strength he isn’t feeling. 

“Curious turn of phrase, here,” Jesse Manes snarls out. “Thought you were a criminal, not so long ago.”

Michael stretches out his hand and crooks his fingers. The glass doors from the first four cells burst into a million pieces, showering Jesse Manes in crystal and debris, forcing him to cover himself. It’s just a small relief from the tension while he searches for a way out from the only room in the whole ship that only has one exit. Michael looks around, locating a hatch that looks like it’s seen better days — all rusty and half covered by the bunk in the cell across Alex’s. Michael knew that one cell wasn’t supposed to be used, and now he understands that the reason behind Max insisting in his notes that no one was ever locked up in it was because it’s the only cell with a way of escaping. If he’s not mistaken — and he’s usually right when it comes to schematics — that hatch opens straight into the deep void of space outside the ship.

He breaks the glass with his mind as Jesse Manes stands up and charges against him. Michael stops him with his mind, but the baggage of feeling Isobel’s pain is dragging him down. He won’t be able to hold on much longer, and as much as it pains him, he has to close his connection with Isobel from his end. The last thing he feels is her sheer distress before he shuts her off completely. 

“Guess your powers got a bit wacky,” Jesse Manes points out as he aims his gun once again at Michael. “Give me the prisoner and I will leave your ship.”

“Never,” Michael promises, moving the scarce furniture on the empty cell around so he has a good view on the hatch. 

“Let me out,” Alex says then, knocking once again on the glass. “Let him have me. He’ll kill you.”

“I’m not one to give up,” Michael snarls, more to himself than to anyone else. “You’re not getting _my_ prisoner!”

“ _Michael_ ,” Alex pleads, but it falls to deaf ears. Michael’s not having any of it — he feels overprotective about Alex, but it’s because Alex is his first big achievement and he doesn’t want to miss the opportunity of making something right when all he’s done in his life is create wrongs.

And maybe, just for a second that lasts an eternity, Michael thinks heʼs found the other half of a soul he never thought heʼd have back, after all the wreckage heʼs left behind from his wildest days. 

“Listen to him, _captain_ ,” Jesse Manes insists.

“Youʼll have him over my dead body,” Michael says over Alex’s voice urging him to just open the cell and be done with it.

Michael knows what will happen if he opens that cell at the same time as he opens the hatch. He can’t risk it.

“That can be arranged, _captain_ ,” Jesse Manes promises, charging against him, but Michael’s ready. 

With a swift movement in his mind, he bursts the hatch open and the entire force of the vacuum of space pulls everything that’s not anchored to the ground into the hole. Michael manages to attach himself to the bunk of the open cell, which is screwed to the wall, before the hole eats him alive.

Jesse Manes doesn’t have the same luck, and since the whole ordeal catches him off guard, he’s sucked into the void before he can even scream.

Michael fights to keep himself inside the ship while closing the hatch with his powers, which proves to be difficult when he feels drained after using his telekinesis for so long, but he manages to do so. Everything stops floating around at the speed of sound, and it drops down around him. He pants as he pushes himself off the ground with his two hands, groaning when he realizes he’s bleeding from a wound on his side. 

“Something hit you,” Alex explains from behind the glass door that has resisted the pull of the space. “I don’t know what it was, but I saw it piercing you. Are you okay?”

Michael limps his way to the glass door and opens it with whatever little strength he has left, not caring that he’s freeing his prisoner. He isn’t sure anymore that Alex Manes is _just_ a prisoner to him. He collapses on the floor, coughing up blood, and he almost misses the worried tone in Alex’s voice as he rushes toward him once the glass door is completely open.

“Michael, oh my god, Michael, what’s happening? You’re bleeding!” Alex kneels with difficulty — Michael doesn’t think imprisonment has done any good on Alex’s stump — and rakes a hand through Michael’s curls, damp with sudden sweat. “You’re going to be okay, I promise, you’re going to be okay.”

Michael tries to speak, but he’s cut off by Alex’s hands moving south, pushing him against Alex’s chest, that heartbeat steading the dread Michael’s been feeling ever since he’s seen Jesse Manes’ face on his main screen. “Hush now,” Alex commands. “I’ll try to hail someone to come help, and then I’ll willingly go inside that cell.”

“I just killed your father,” Michael coughs, choking on the words and the blood that doesn’t seem to stop running out of him. 

“He deserved it,” Alex states, and Michael knows he means it, and not just because Jesse Manes tried to take his ship by assault. After everything Michael’s read on Alex’s files, he’s sure that even if Jesse Manes hadn’t wrecked his ship, Michael would have gone after him to kill him. “Now, let me try to help.”

“Captain,” the comms come alive throughout the ship, Noah’s voice cracking up through the pipes. “Enemy’s been eliminated. I repeat, enemy’s been eliminated.”

“Michael?” Alex whispers, shaking him slightly. “Stay with me, please. Just stay with me.”

He drops a kiss on Michael’s forehead, brushing his curls with plump lips, and that’s the last thing Michael feels before taking down the walls inside his mind that he’d put up to block Isobel, and allowing darkness to claim him.

* * *

“Where to, captain?” 

Michael smiles as he receives the greeting from his most trusted crew members — Noah and Isobel — when he steps into the bridge. It’s been quite a few weeks of recovery in some Earth hospital modified to accommodate aliens while Alex Manes attended his trials for treason and robbery. Michael still needs to sit down every now and then after walking a few steps, the wound on his side healing up nicely but slowly, but he’s alive.

And he has his ship back, his family back. And once Alex had been cleared of all charges and Jesse Manes had been declared guilty of conspiracy against his own son, Michael had been able to breathe again.

As if his life now depends on the powerless human who’s shown him more compassion and understanding in five Earth days than anyone else in a lifetime.

“What about randomly picking up some coordinates, Bracken?” he suggests, sitting on the captain’s chair. “You get to decide where now.”

“They say Antar is beautiful around their own summer,” Isobel says, punching some keys and making some images of their home planet — the one they never got to know when they were kids — show up in the main screens. Michael smiles at the blue trees in full bloom and the yellow sky.

“I’ve never been to Antar,” Alex says, walking into the bridge, crutch in hand. Michael turns around and his smile grows even wider. He knows he’ll never get tired of seeing Alex sauntering into his life like he belongs there.

Michael knows he does.

“Only if you promise not to try and steal from the rich to give it to the poor,” Michael jokes, shaking his head. It’s been an ongoing joke between them, the way Alex has been acting around the wealthy only to give something back to the ones who’ve grown to be less lucky than the rest. Michael thinks he might have used a bit of that when he was younger, but something in his gut tells him that he needed to become who he is now in order to be able to love Alex the way he deserves.

 _Love is a strange concept_ , Michael thinks. _It makes you question yourself again and again, but it also helps you know yourself better_.

He now understands a little bit better what compelled Max to give up his life for an Earthling — he would _die_ to keep Alex safe. He almost did. And he’d have gone happily, easily, if that had meant saving Alex from the grief he was about to endure.

He also knows, now, that Alex would give up his life for him as well, and that’s a feeling Michael holds so close to his heart that it’s almost fused with his own heartbeat.

“You know I can’t promise to behave,” Alex jokes back, eliciting a loud laugh from Isobel and a snort from Noah. Michael huffs lightly, but he’s smiling.

“Antar it is, then,” he agrees, moving the different mechanisms with his mind as Alex takes a seat in the chair that Noah has purposefully pulled up next to Michael’s. He sneaks his hand over the armrest and grabs Alex’s, intertwining their fingers with a small smile.

“Antar it is.”


End file.
